1917. Key to the “Russian” Revolution. Николай Стариков

no bread, it is the autocracy responsible.

      After consulting with the "allied" delegations that had arrived for the conference, Nicholas II peacefully departed for the General Headquarters in Mogilev. He left his capital on February 22, 1917. The Tsar is often blamed for leaving Petrograd at the most critical moment. Yet, there were solid grounds for leaving the capital: he was at the head of the army and had to be at the General Headquarters. There were no particular reasons for concern. In spite of the fact that on the day that the State Duma was opened for sessions, workers' demonstrations were planned, all the riots were prevented thanks to the accurate actions of the secret police service, certain people were arrested. The last arrests in the history of the Russian secret police service[50]…

      The planned marches did not take place. Only about 20,000 people went on strike. At two factories workers marched off with revolutionary songs crying, "Down with the war," but were scattered by the police. On Nevsky Prospect, male and female students converged in crowds but were also cleared away. The capital seemed to return to its peaceful state, and Nicholas II could return to manage the battle operations without any anxiety. However, leaving Petrograd and sensing uneasy situation in the capital, the Tsar ordered to send the reliable troops forth from the front to Tsarskoye Selo. Just in case. Could he have predicted the betrayal by the top military commanders?!

      Protopopov, the minister of internal affairs, wrote, "In mid-February, the Tsar informed me with a distaste that he had ordered General Gurko to send the lancer regiment and Cossacks forth to Petrograd but Gurko did not send those. Instead, he assigned other regiments including navy (who were considered pro-revolutionary)."[51] The researcher of the February events Ivan Solonevich writes, "Among other things it certainly can be explained by foolishness, however, this explanation faces the fact that everything has limits in our world, even human foolishness. It was a treason, a well-thought and well-planned one."[52]

      Apart from the non-performed military preparations, before departure the Tsar received Prince Golitsyn and signed a decree on the Duma dismissal, leaving it at his disposal. If required, Golitsyn was authorized to date the decree and notify the Duma members on their dismissal. After that, the monarch's train left for the General Headquarters in Mogilev.

      The next day after the monarch's departure, as if by command, serious riots spontaneously started in the city. "February 23 was International Women's Day. The plan was to celebrate it in social and democratic circles in the usual order: meetings, speeches, news sheets," Lev Trotsky wrote later in his "History of the Russian Revolution." "The day before nobody had the slightest idea that Women's Day would be the first day of the revolution. There was not a single organization invoking strikes on that day."[53]

      Nobody called out to start the strikes but they started. Randomly, on their own, out of nowhere. However, the fact that tension started right after Nicholas's departure, makes us ponder on the "spontaneity" of people's anger. The Empress, who remained in Tsarskoye Selo, sent a letter to her husband the next day, "Yesterday there were disturbances on Vasilievsky Island and on Nevsky Prospect, because the poor tried to storm bakeries. They broke the Philippov's shop into shatters, and the Cossacks were forwarded against that. I received this information поп-officially (the italics are mine. – N. S.)'.'[54]

      This is extremely important. Information blackout of the royal family is an obligatory condition for the coup to succeed. The blackout was in the final stage – the city was already overwhelmed by the revolution, but the Empress discovered it not from the people whose job it was to inform her. The same about the people close to Nicholas II – they did not report anything to him, and from his wife's letter he could only understand that nothing critical was going on. The Tsar did not know that the destiny of the dynasty was being resolved at that moment in Petrograd, the issue of life or death for his country and his family. Yet, to understand what was in store for him he should have only read the records of the Duma sessions.

      Later on, the members of the Provisional Government would shift the blame for assassinated Romanovs' family onto Bolsheviks. There is just as much truth in those accusations as bluff. On February 14, 1917, the plan was to prevent demonstrations and uprising, when Kerensky said in his speech to the Parliament, "Today the historic task for the Russian people is to abolish the medieval regime immediately at any cost… What legitimate instruments can be used for fighting those who turned the law into a tool for torturing people? There is only one way of fighting lawbreakers – their physical removal."[55]

      Rodzianko, the chairman, interrupted Kerensky's speech asking what he meant by those words. The response followed immediately, "I mean what Brutus did in the times of Ancient Rome."[56] This was a direct instigation for an uprisal. Never before had anyone the guts to speak about monarchy in that manner. He sounded suicidal: death sentence is the outcome for such statements – appealing for a state revolution and assassination of the Tsar – even at the time of peace. Not to mention the wartime. But there was no reason to worry about Alexander Kerensky – it cost nothing to him. He was one of the few who had deeper outlook into the plans of "the allies." Kerensky was so daring because he knew Nicholas II was to stay on the throne for only a few days. No success today only meant success a week later. Memoirs of the future head of the Russian Republic are full of Freudian slips. The actions that he would conduct on that post were even more informative.